IRS Commissioner Leaving Agency After Agreement With DHS on Illegal Immigrant Data

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Melanie Krause had been acting commissioner for about a month.

The acting commissioner of the IRS is departing the agency, officials said hours after it reached an agreement with Homeland Security officials to share data on illegal immigrants.

Acting Commissioner Melanie Krause will no longer be with the IRS, a spokesperson for the Treasury Department, the parent agency of the IRS, said.

“Melanie Krause has been leading the IRS through a time of extraordinary change,” the spokesperson told news outlets in a statement. “We wish Melanie well on her next endeavor,” the spokesperson added later.

The spokesperson also said, “As we focus on IT modernization and re-organize the agency to better serve the taxpayer, we are also in the midst of breaking down data silos that for too long have stood in the way of identifying waste, fraud, and abuse and bringing criminals to justice.”

Krause joined the IRS in 2021 after seven years with the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General. She was serving as the agency’s chief operating officer when she was promoted in February to acting commissioner, following the retirement of Doug O’Donnell. O’Donnell had previously taken over as acting commissioner after Commissioner Danny Werfel stepped down shortly before President Donald Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20.

Krause and the IRS did not return requests for comment.

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The IRS and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently reached an agreement that gives DHS the ability to request tax return information for people under criminal investigation, according to a court filing. If DHS requests the information, “the IRS must provide it,” government lawyers said.

“Information sharing across agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals, determine what public safety and terror threats may exist so we can neutralize them, scrub these individuals from voter rolls, as well as identify what public benefits these aliens are using at the American taxpayer expense,” a DHS spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

Critics decried the move.

“This is deeply shameful and breaks a promise that information immigrants provided the IRS to pay their taxes would not be used for deportations,” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) wrote on the social media platform X.

Federal law largely bars the IRS from sharing confidential taxpayer information, although there are exceptions, including for information sought for use in federal criminal investigations.

A spokesperson for the Treasury Department told news outlets in a statement that the agreement was signed under “longstanding authorities granted by Congress, which serve to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans while streamlining the ability to pursue criminals.”

The New York University Tax Law Center said in a brief that the IRS systems are not designed for immigration enforcement and will likely lead to instances where DHS seeks data on a person but the information the IRS provides is actually from another individual.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

Original News Source Link – Epoch Times

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